AndreaTravnicek

Acting Assistant Secretary

Acting Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks

Andrea Travnicek, since August 2018, has been serving as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The Trump administration has yet to nominate anyone for the position of Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Travnicek was previously a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science.

Andrea Travnicek, most recently a lobbyist for a coal and natural gas company, has worked on energy issues for the past decade for both private sector companies and the government. From 2010 until 2016, Travnicek worked as a senior advisor to the Governor of North Dakota, where she said it was “possible” they’d force the Army Corps of Engineers to transfer 9,000 acres on Lake Oahe to the state and “possibly to private landowners.” Following her government work, Travnicek started working at regional law firm Lockridge Grindal Nauen “as manager of government relations and regulatory affairs.” During that time, Andrea Travnicek began lobbying the state government she’d just left, as a lobbyist for Allete, a natural gas and coal energy company which owns a lignite coal mine in North Dakota that produces 4.5 million tons of lignite coal annually, and Nexus Youth And Family Solutions, which operates a network of child treatment centers. Nexus, which had repeatedly been cited “for allowing vulnerable children to engage in inappropriate sexual contact,” had been publicly condemned months prior to Travnicek registering to lobby for them, after one of their employees entered the room of a teenage girl in their care, where he “exposed his genitals, fondled her breasts, and then ‘anally penetrated’ her.”

Andrea Travicek was a registered North Dakota state lobbyist, on behalf of Allete, a natural gas and coal energy company that is also “the corporate parent of BNI Energy, which owns and operates… a lignite mine near Center, North Dakota,” mining “about 4.5 million tons of lignite coal annually.”

Sometime between July 2016 to June 2017, Andrea Travnicek registered as a lobbyist in North Dakota on behalf of Allete.

Allete is an energy company that “generates electricity from coal-fired, natural gas-fired, biomass co-fired, hydroelectric, wind, solar, and other sources” and “serves taconite mining, iron concentrate, paper, pulp and wood products, and pipeline industries.” Allete is also the “corporate parent of BNI Energy, which owns and operates BNI Coal, LTD., a lignite mine near Center, North Dakota,” which “mines about 4.5 million tons of lignite coal annually.”

In 2016, Andrea Travnicek said it was “possible” they would force the transfer of 9,000 acres on Lake Oahe “owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers” to the the state and “possibly to private landowners.”

In 2016, following the passage of a 2015 bill directing North Dakota Governor and the state’s congressional delegation to get Congress to transfer about 9,000 acres on Lake Oahe “owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.” Former Corps of Engineers member Andrea Travnicek, “the governor’s policy adviser on natural resources, said the possible return of private lands, where practicable, is under discussion,” to be given ” to the state and possibly to private landowners.”

In 2015, Andrea Travnicek raked in a $21,040 bonus paid by taxpayer money, the “first time” a Governor had “used the bonus program since it started in 1999.”

Andrea Travnicek, in June 2015, was paid a $21,040 retention bonus by Republican North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple. Gov. Dalrymple paid out a total of $99,824 in retention bonuses, “the first time a governor has used the bonus program since it started in 1999.”